A Quote by Carl L. Becker

The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.

Carl L. Becker

Quote Topics

Aware Insignificant Man Significance

Quote Author

Carl L. Becker
American - Historian
September 7, 1873 - April 10, 1945

In naturalism, man is actually very insignificant, but arrogates to himself stupendous power. In Christianity, man is actually the apex of created significance, but is called to see it in abject humility.

Ravi Zacharias

The significance is hiding in the insignificant. Appreciate everything.

Eckhart Tolle

I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.

Frank McCourt

Each individual is more or less dimly aware of his significance, is aware that he's something innately superior, something eternal--and lives, is obligated to live, in the moment and for the moment.

Ivan Turgenev

I learned, too, how it was possible with the help of the picture and action to transform an apparently insignificant violin passage into an incident, and to lift a simple horn call into a thing of stupendous significance by means of scenic emphasis.

Anton Seidl

There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

Leonard Cohen

Every Jewish holiday has a religious significance, a historical significance, and a relevance to the time of year in the natural calendar of the seasons and trees and growing things, as well as a personal significance. So you are always looking backward, outward, inward and forward.

Marge Piercy

Are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the significance of its life--a significance which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has need of them?

George Eliot

The Superior Man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.

Confucius

If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.

G. I. Gurdjieff

As there is no insignificant work, there is not an insignificant leader. All leaders need training...not just a few.

Quint Studer

I think anyone who suffers from chronic pain can agree with this - you feel this great significance. What I wanted to capture was that significance, and as a matter of fact I think that's one of the lyrics on 'Conflict,' on the split. I touch on the significance, and really it's a selfish thing, in an offbeat way.

Phil Anselmo

It is better to be doing the most insignificant thing than to reckon even a half-hour insignificant.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tiny-perhaps." Rovender kept his eyes fixed on the rings. "Insignificant-never, Eva Nine. No living thing is insignificant.

Tony DiTerlizzi

I see no reason to believe that a creator of protoplasm or primeval matter, if such there be, has any reason to be interested in our insignificant race in a tiny corner of the universe, and still less in us, as still more insignificant individuals. Again, I see no reason why the belief that we are insignificant or fortuitous should lessen our faith.